


Can't Drag Me Away

by dietplainlite



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: F/M, Johnlockary - Freeform, M/M, Parentlock
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-23
Updated: 2015-01-23
Packaged: 2018-03-08 17:20:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 463
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3217307
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dietplainlite/pseuds/dietplainlite
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She’s fussy tonight, and he often has a hard time with her when she’s like this. Fidgety, almost nodding off and then jerking awake with a wail. It’s a bit too much.  Nevertheless, he stands in the nursery, dark but for the stars projected on the walls and ceiling, cradling the baby to his chest.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Can't Drag Me Away

**Author's Note:**

  * For [](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts).



Tonight is a Stones night.  John likes the Stones.  Mary loves Motown.  Of course Sherlock had immediately thrown out those Rockabye Baby CDs that Ted and Stella had given them and recorded the pop tunes himself, along with a few of his favorite pastorals. His own arrangements, of course.

The baby doesn’t care, though he is quite certain that she falls asleep on average four minutes faster when listening to his selections. 

She’s fussy tonight, and he often has a hard time with her when she’s like this. Fidgety, almost nodding off and then jerking awake with a wail. It’s a bit too much.  Nevertheless, he stands in the nursery, dark but for the stars projected on the walls and ceiling (John had joked that Charlotte and he could learn the stars at the same time) cradling the baby against his chest, inhaling her intoxicating baby smell that Mary said would go away one day, hoping it won’t.

Mary and John are passed out in the bedroom, Mary’s hair still wet and John’s shoes still on.  When Charlotte is down, he’ll go slide in between them, kiss Mary on the forehead and fold his arms around her. John will mutter something inane as he wraps his arm around Sherlock and they’ll all sleep, deeply, but attuned to the sound of the baby’s breath through the monitor.

More than once they have all popped up like a family of meerkats on high alert--breath held, bodies tense--at one of Charlotte’s tiny coughs, then collapsed again as a unit as she settled back down.

Early on, someone had suggested shifts since there were three of them, and they’d tried it. One working, one sleeping, one tending Charlotte.  After three weeks, Mary said over a rare dinner when they were all present and awake, “It’s just the loneliest goddamned existence though, isn’t it?”

John and Sherlock had nodded, and that was that.  Now they just sort of muddle through.

He hums along to the current song, only because the rumble of his chest soothes Charlotte, not because this one, even in its original format, isn’t _too_ bad.

No, this one is sentimental and cliché, despite its pleasant melody. Best without the lyrics. 

Though as he rocks back and forth, the lyrics come back. He’d tried deleting them but after listening to the song so frequently while arranging it for violin, they’d become stuck. 

Maybe it’s alright to sing them softly as he gently puts her into her cot, and as he stands over her with his hand on her tummy, making sure she’s really out before he turns on the monitor and heads down the stairs.  Still singing, though she can’t hear, as he walks through the kitchen and into the bedroom. 

Wild horses, indeed.


End file.
